PART-TIME TEACHERS will shortly receive €45 million in back pay because of “incompetence” by the Minister for Education and his department, Fine Gael claimed yesterday.
Brian Hayes, party spokesman on education, said the taxpayer was facing this bill as a result of the unwillingness of the Minister to address the issue.
But the department said it has no record of indicating that the bill would be €45 million. It said the actual bill will be closer to €10 million.
Mr Hayes said the liability arises as a result of the department’s failure to implement the Protection of Employees (Part-Time) Work Act 2001. As a result of this, an unknown number of teachers were not paid in full.
It was ridiculous, he said, that the Minister was still refusing to confirm the amount involved, only two weeks before the due payment.
“The taxpayer faces a huge financial bill as a result of the incompetence of the Department of Education and the unwillingness of Batt O’Keeffe to address the issue. He has known about this problem for 16 months. In July of 2008, it was announced that two teachers were awarded €100,000 in salary arrears and, at that point, Minister O’Keeffe had already known of the problem for months.”
